


Iron Pyrite

by bellmare



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Social Links, caught in a bad romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:09:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3114269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellmare/pseuds/bellmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Building connections sounds, well, impersonal. Businesslike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iron Pyrite

**Spring.**

He never knew Dojima had a niece. Not until he starts seeing a new face around town. A girl he's never met.

She looks nothing like the other girls from Inaba. Not like the other small-town girls. She's the grey-washed cement of the city; she carries herself ramrod-straight, with the steel of skyscrapers. 

She reminds him of those city girls lurking in alleys, of the ones hauled into police stations for unsavoury misdemeanors. The rough girls with split lips and bloody knuckles, with darting eyes and indifferent sneers. Only cleaner, somehow. Shrink-wrapped into wholesome packaging, no doubt for her cop uncle's benefit.

"Adachi-san," she says again. Calm. Polite. "What are you doing here?"

Adachi rearranges his face into an expression he knows well. Sheepishness. A short, silly-me laugh. "Hey, what're you, the Inquisition? What does it look like I'm doing?"

"... buying groceries for the department?"

He veils a scowl with an intake of breath. "That's no way to speak to your elders!"

"Sorry. I didn't think you were that old."

"Well, thanks," he says before he can stop himself. "And I'm staking out, if you really wanna know. Best place to investigate, y'see? Cool in summer, warm in winter, just nice during spring ... it's where everybody goes."

"I guess. Mind if I hang out with you?"

"Sorry, what?"

The corners of her eyes narrow imperceptibly in a faint smile. "Weather's nice in here and I'm bored. I've always wanted to see what a real-life stakeout's like."

"You should quit watching all those cop dramas," he says. She shrugs.

.

He finds out later that her name is Sumire. 

He never asked. She never volunteered. He just overheard it once, when Dojima was on the phone.

It doesn't suit her. He doesn't think of violets when he looks at her. 

The name's familiar, in a vague, half-recalled way. He wonders if she was ever one of the girls he'd seen at the Tatsumi Port Island police station. 

.

"This town's so dead and boring," he says once. It slips out, unbidden, faster than he can stop it.

Seta -- and he still calls her Seta, because Sumire feels too personal, as though they really have a connection -- turns her head, staring out over the rooftops from the Junes food court. 

"Takes one to know one," she says absently.

.

"Why did you end up in the sticks?" he asks her.

Seta shrugs. "Parents travelling. Again. They didn't want to leave me alone in the city. Again. Worried about  _bad influences_  coming back to bite me in the ass."

"Sent you on probation to the cop uncle, huh?"

She glances at him. "You're a funny guy, Adachi-san."

"I try."

"And what about you?"

He gulps down the last of his coffee and lobs the paper cup into a dustbin. Nothing but net. " _Exemplary performance_ ," he says through his teeth, drawing out each syllable.

.

**Summer.**

Adachi's wary of her, and, in his opinion, rightly so.

He prefers the ones that won't fight back. Like that Konishi brat. Like the reporter. Seta has the look of a feral cat. Sleek and self-possessed, as cats are wont to be; something that will sink its claws into him and  _dig_  and drag him down if he's not careful, and he has no intention of allowing that to happen. 

Once or twice, he thinks about asking her why she's wasting her time, chatting idly with him. Why she's wasting  _his_  time, for god's sake. In the end, he just chalks it down to the same reason the old broad at Junes keeps on badgering him. 

"Maybe the old biddy's just lonely," he says. "I'm not that much of a prick to ignore her. Though I really wish she'd quit it with the nimono, already."

Seta doesn't reply, continuing to inspect produce. She'd invited him to dinner and he'd declined. He's now regretting his decision to shack up at home and dump some frozen gyoza into the microwave.

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Lonely," Adachi says, trying to make it sound offhand. "You lonely or something? C'mon, girl like you should be going out on dates or hanging out with friends. Don't you have anyone your age to hang out with?"

She chews meditatively on the inside of her cheek. "Well, yeah. But it's important to mix around with people of all ages. Gotta build connections."

He notices she doesn't say,  _make friends_. Building connections sounds, well, impersonal. Businesslike.

"Ouch, that's cold. Am I just another connection?"

Seta gazes at him from beneath her fringe. "I meant it metaphorically, Adachi-san. I like having friends of all kinds. Makes life interesting."

"Hm."

"Hm," she says, and upends the contents of her shopping basket into his. Meat and daikon and burdock root topple over his turnips and cup noodles and frozen gyoza. "Hey--" Adachi says, annoyed.

"What about you?"

"--huh?"

"Are you lonely?"

Adachi laughs. "Hell no. Dojima-san keeps me too busy to be lonely."

"Hm," Seta says again, and liberates his shopping basket from him. "Come over for dinner. I'm sure Uncle won't mind."

.

She doesn't cook nimono.

.

The Dojima house is ... well, it's a home. It's slightly messy, in the way homes are. Like there are actual people that live there, actual people with actual lives. There are photographs. A row of mugs, drying on the draining board. A calendar by the entrance, its pages dog-eared, dates filled in with notes and short messages. A notepad next to the phone with haphazard phrases written all over. 'Eggs cucumber vinegar', says one in a child's carefully-printed hiragana. 'Tutoring, call cell if need anything', says another, penned with sharp, neat strokes. 'Will be home late, tell Nanako sorry, tuck her in' reads yet another in an untidy scrawl.

It almost makes him reluctant to go back to his own place -- for that's all it is. A place to sleep, a place to while away the midnight hours.

.

He invites himself over the second time. It's a desperate, spur-of-the-moment thing; a garbled excuse he blurts out to escape from another night of nimono with rubbery renkon foisted on him.

(Or maybe it's to escape loneli-- no, of course not. That's pathetic.)

The old broad titters, "isn't she a bit too young for you, Tohru-chan?" and he turns, embarrassed, from her and Seta's amusement.

"It's not like that," he mumbles. "We're family friends."

Seta's shoulders shake with silent laughter. She disguises it with a sneeze and a rub of the back of her neck.

"She's right, though," Adachi says, once the old bag has tottered off. "You're gonna get old before your time."

"And I'm keeping you young," Seta replies, collecting the shopping bags.  _You're a little shit_ , Adachi wants to say, and instead he just laughs.

.

Seta has nice hands.

The rest isn't too bad. She's not conventionally attractive in the same way as Risette, or as traditionally attractive as the Amagi girl. He wouldn't call her cute, because that would just mean she's harmless.  _Cute_  would imply a housecat. What Seta is is something more akin to a leopard. Something that could maul.

The Seta he's seen ducking out of Junes in the evenings is different from the one helping Nanako with her homework. The Seta that prowls outside returns with cuts and bruises, with burns and blisters, slinking back home like an alley tom going to lick its wounds. 

He watches them with his chin cupped in his hand. The Seta explaining kanji readings to Nanako is softer; gentler. A purring tabby, curled up by the window. She ruffles Nanako's hair and lets her cousin paste stickers on her hands and forearms and tells stories about them, weaving together the tales of Featherman R and Magical Detective Loveline. 

"Pass the pen," he says. Seta glances questioningly at him. "I'm gonna draw Nanako a nice, big flower. She finished the story, didn't she?"

Yeah, she's got nice hands, he thinks as she hands him the pen. Intriguing would perhaps be a better word. They're not soft and dainty, but hard and strong. Nicely-shaped, though. She's good with them, too; he's watched her fold origami animal after animal, a delicate paper menagerie scattered over the tabletop while she corrects Nanako's spelling. Not too bad at cooking, either.

"D'you want a flower too?" he asks her. Seta grins. "Draw me a nice one," she says as she extends her left arm, palm-up. 

"Hey," he says and she glances his way again. "Hey, not on your palm. It'll become wonky."

"Right." She flips her hand over and flattens it out, fingers splayed on the table. With her right, she pencils corrections onto Nanako's worksheet while Adachi draws across the back of her hand and around her knuckles; down her fingers and up her wrist, drawing daisies and marigolds and poppies on her skin in cheap blue ballpoint ink.

.

He tells her, "only a handful of people in this world get what they really want".

Seta cocks her head; an invitation to continue. She rolls something over and over in her palm as she watches the Shiroku owner's arowana patrol its tank. 

"That's why everyone consoles themselves with fakes and stand-ins, deluding themselves the whole time. That's also why I like being alone, you know? Shit's easy. Lets me do whatever I want."

"That's true," she says. She sets the thing in her hand down on the counter. Looks like a gemstone. Adachi wonders, fleetingly, if Seta's running an illegal jewel-smuggling ring, or something. He thinks about asking for a cut of the profits. Just as a joke, of course.

He doesn't know if she really means what she says. Whether she means  _anything_  she says. He doesn't know what he really thinks of her; if he actually likes her. After all, all they do is say things they think they want to hear. 

"Hey, that's cold. You're twenty years too early to be the jaded cynic. Aren't you supposed to be Miss Congeniality?"

She shrugs. "But it  _is_  easier being alone. Sometimes."

.

They hardly see each other, after that.

.

**Fall.**

When she falls, she falls hard and fast. He'd seen the signs before she had. The interview. The digitally-scrambled voice of a grade-schooler. Unlike her, he wasn't in denial.

She loses some of that old composure after Nanako disappears into the TV. She becomes erratic. Restless. He feels new personae thronging beneath her skin each time they meet. The Moon arcana here. The Tower there. Once, the Hanged Man. She keeps Justice personae far away, as though the mere presence of them hurts her.

He escorts her home the night Dojima's hospitalised and she drags him into the house. It's become familiar -- almost moreso than his own. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the table where they'd sat during the summer holidays, helping Nanako with holiday homework. He remembers the flowers he drew on Seta's hand.

And now, her hand twitches in his. She trembles with shock, with anger, with grief -- he isn't sure what it is. All he is now is a distraction from things far worse, and he just plays along. She picks him because he was the closest at hand. The most convenient. Well, whatever. It's convenient for both of them, anyway. He hasn't gotten laid for a while and Seta, well, god knows what Seta ever really wants. He's given up on figuring her out.

She doesn't bother to justify herself. He doesn't volunteer any. They fuck in her cold, dark room until she stops shaking, until she stops and sits up and glares out of the window with some of the old, familiar clarity in her eyes.

"I'll save her," Seta says softly. It's a promise. Or a statement. Or maybe just a reassurance. Either way, it was never meant for him.

.

A long time ago, he'd have felt dirty for doing this. For all this. For taking advantage of her.

Now, it doesn't even matter. They're both taking advantage of one another, anyway, and they both know it.

.

He doesn't see her during the days. At night they alternate between his apartment and the Dojima home. 

It's been a long time since he's had a woman over in his place. The first time here, in Inaba, anyway. She doesn't comment on the sterile neatness of his house, doesn't comment on the fact that his fridge is empty and his trash is full of containers with contents that could support their own ecosystems. She just lines her shoes up neatly next to his and carefully folds her jacket before placing it on the couch.

He's disappointed. Just a little. Before, he'd have expected a quip like, 'I didn't have you pegged as a stickler for being neat and orderly, Adachi-san'. No, each time she comes over she is quiet and distracted; restless, yet aware enough of her surroundings to follow its natural order.

She's tightly-wound, agitated from another day spent trying to reach wherever it is Nanako's trapped. She claws and worries at him and they go at it like they hate each other. 

Nothing visible. That's the only rule. 

And when they're done, he watches as she slips on her shoes and slides into her coat. Or she watches  _him_  as he buckles his belt and sling the rumpled tie over his neck. Then she says, 'goodnight, Adachi-san', as though they'd just been having dinner and watching the evening news.

Seta never stays, or never invites him to. He prefers it, that way. 

.

It stops when they find Nanako, when Seta takes up vigil in the hospital and curls up in the chair in Nanako's room. The nurses give up on trying to shoo her out.

"Go home," Adachi says. Seta regards him silently through one open eye. He realises that through the entire thing, through the past week, she never once cried. He wonders what it means. Women are fucking hard to understand. 

He wonders if he hates her. For fuck's sake, this will be boring as shit when he finally pushes her into the TV one day. She wouldn't scream. Wouldn't cry. There's no fun in that.

.

Well, whatever. Party time's over. 

.

**Winter.**

Well. He'd thought she had a good head on her shoulders. The entire November affair seems to have unhinged her more than he'd thought. Rattled the bars of the leopard's cage, and released a monster in her stead.

It's so, so fascinating to watch.

He hadn't actually thought she'd do it. Jump rashly to conclusions, blinded by emotion. Must be a woman thing. She'd almost gone and pushed Namatame into the TV herself.

"Look, just because we're ..." And here, he stops. What exactly are they, to one another? Friends? Acquaintances? Social links? Fuck buddies? Friends with benefits?  _Connections?_

"Just because we're what?" she asks him. Flat and calm and taut with anger underneath. 

"... familiar with each other," he supplies lamely. "Just because we're  _familiar_  with each other doesn't mean I can turn a blind eye if you decide to pull a little murder stunt, okay? What do you think Dojima-san'd say?"

(-- he only does it because he wants to stretch the game out a little more. Not out of concern for Namatame's sorry hide, or anything.)

"... kill him?" she says blankly. "Everyone was thinking it, anyway. Look at what he did to Nanako! She's  _dead_!" 

Her cousin's name escapes her mouth in a shout, her volume escalating with each word, in a pitch reserved only for hysteria, echolocation, and dog whistles. She's gone pale, breathing heavily through her nose.

When he looks at her, he can't tell where the protective elder sister ends and where the alleycat girl begins. At the end, aren't those  _sukeban_  bosses supposed to be like big sisters to their underlings, too?

"Nanako-chan's not dead," he says. "And she wouldn't want her Big Sis to be a killer."

_But I do_ , he thinks.  _I do._

Seta's shoulders relax, then sag. She puts her face in her hands and digs her knuckles into her forehead. "No," she says dully into her fingers. "No, she wouldn't."

.

Days pass. They don't talk as much as they used to, but something in her seems to have changed. He steels himself for a conversation he knows is coming and makes contingency plans. 

"Adachi-san, we need to talk," she says late on the a foggy December night, standing right in the middle of Namatame's room. It's only a matter of time before the world disappears. He doesn't intend to stick around to hear Inaba's final wheezy, pitiful swan song.

"Are you breaking up with me?" he asks. The joke falls flat. "Okay, fine. What is it?"

"... it's you, isn't it?"

"It's me, what? I stole the cookie from the cookie jar and killed Cock Robin, yeah. C'mon, you gotta be more direct than that."

"Enough," Seta says. She sounds tired. "You sent the letters. You made Namatame believe he was saving people, so he could do your dirty work."

"And if I did?"

The TV in this room is massive. No problems fitting her through the thing. It'd make for some nice poetic irony. Or poetic justice, whatever. 

"And if I did?" he repeats, closing the distance between them. 

She watches him approach, shifting subtly to keep him squarely in front of her. 

He reaches for her; his fingers close around her throat. 

Her breath hitches slightly, but not enough to symbolise fear. Panic. Annoyance prickles through him. "Well, you always were a frigid bitch," he says. "Only ever concerned about getting yourself off. Or too busy putting on sympathetic faces and pretending to listen and care about other people all the time."

Now  _she_  looks annoyed. "Why, criticising my performance to get a reaction now, are we? You sure weren't complaining before."

She takes a deep breath and tilts her head back, scrunching up her face as though deep in concentration. Or going through her options. Or maybe thinking about admitting defeat. The muscles in her neck tense. And then she headbutts him. Right in the middle of the face.

He'd been expecting a jab to the solar plexus, or maybe a crotch attack. Maybe a stomp to the foot. Either way, he's too shocked to keep hold of her -- and his face is throbbing too much for him to care, because, holy shit, did she break his nose? 

Seta steps out of his reach, and towards the TV. She lowers herself towards it, perching on the rim, holding onto the edges for support. "Adachi-san, if you really wanted to throw me in the TV that badly you didn't have to play around at being nice for this long. You only had to ask." She winces a little, rubbing her forehead. "See you on the flipside," she says as she loosens her grip. 

The hospital doors bursts open. Adachi glances over his shoulder in time to meet the horrified eyes of Seta's bunch of friends. He turns back towards the TV in time to watch her loafers disappear over the edge.

Well, fuck it. He was planning on going that way, anyway.

.

It seems like he's falling for a long time. He has no idea where he'll land. Or where, for that matter. Maybe this was why Yamano and Konishi died. Hopefully Seta would do him the decency of following suit.

.

  
_Why did you do it?_  he asks her. Or more accurately, an image of her, who's freefalling with him. He has no idea where the real one is. With any luck, lying dead at the bottom with a broken back 

  
_To spite you_ , Seta's ghost says.

.

He lands eventually and it hurts like hell. When he picks himself up, he feels about eighty.

There's no sign of Seta. The world around him twists and shifts, and fog gives way to a ruined town and red-black skies.

.

It's hard to get a sense of direction, with no point of reference. Somewhere along the way, the skies fade to a flat, dreary grey. Somewhere along the way, he finds himself in the wreckage of the Dojima residence, fog hanging low over the floorboards.

Seta's sitting at her usual place at the table, chin tucked in her palm. There are two mugs on the scorched wood in front of her. She turns her head as he climbs over the splintered wood at the threshold. "Mind your head," she says.

"You stupid or something?" he asks her. "You know what I've done. What I'm capable of. And you think it's a smart-ass idea to park your ass down and wait for me."

"We didn't finish our talk," she points out. "Not when you interrupted it by trying to kill me. And then you insulted my performance in bed and in our  _connection_."

"I wasn't trying hard enough then, but I can put you out of your misery now," Adachi says. He draws his gun from its holster, and levels it at her head. 

Her eyes widen. There's a faint trace of yellow in the grey. Or maybe not, because it's gone when he blinks. "Aw, but we were just getting started. Besides, I thought we had something special going on. Just the two of us."

"Why, trying to guilt-trip me into repenting?"

Seta smiles. 

"Listen here, because evidently you're too young and stupid to grasp the rules of the world. If crimes could be solved by appealing to morality, we wouldn't need the police. It's a simple fact. Justice without might is helpless. That would be you lot. And, well, might without justice --" and here, he spreads his arms and smiles, "--is tyrannical." 

Her brows raise slightly. "Pascal."

"Surprised? Hey, I was a bright kid. Studied my ass off. Best in my class. Top in my year. When I was your age, I was going places. I wasn't some ... some dumbfuck  _rookie_ ," he spits. Seta just regards him silently. Everything about her pisses him off. Her unflappable calm. The fact that nothing seems to get a reaction. Geez, he wants to pump her full of lead and call it a day.

Instead, he asks, "do you fancy your chances?"

"I don't know. Should I?"

"Ever heard of Descartes?"

" _Cogito, ergo sum_ ," Seta replies. "I think, therefore I am."

"If you choose not to decide, you still made a choice. If you can't make a decision, it's either because your desires are too great, or ... you're just plain stupid."

She laughs shortly. "That's paraphrasing. A lot."

"I'm feeling generous, in light of our ..." He pauses, searching for the word. "... relationship. A free, get-out-of-jail card. You can get the hell out of here and do some detective work and bring the rest of your rabble-rousers, and I'll grade you lot for trying."

"How nice."

"Yes, and then no more Good Cop. Then I teach you all a lesson about what it means to be an adult. What it's like in the real world where everything isn't all peachy and everyone doesn't pat your ass and praise you just because you took part. Or you can stick around and annoy me with your face and I shoot it. There, easy, huh?"

"Very," she says and unfolds her legs. She stands and brushes ash from her sleeve and walks out of the door, just like that. He almost doesn't believe her gall. 

"I could shoot you in the back any time, you know," he calls. Seta raises a hand and waves, once.

"Hope you like the mug," is all she says.

.

They fight in a manner alarmingly similar to the one in which they fuck. 

And then she brings out something. It stops his blood cold.

A persona that's just like his. " _Izanagi!_ " she bellows. It's the last straw.

(You're not me, he screams from the base of his skull.)

.

Seta visits him at the hospital. It's like yet another indignity he has to suffer, after the countless needle sticks where they couldn't quite locate his veins, and having to pretend to sleep when Dojima shuffles into his room with his IV stand and slumps down in the uncomfortable chair by the window. 

She even brings  _flowers._

"For you," she says and dumps them unceremoniously on his lap. Poppies, daisies and marigolds. "You have shit taste in bouquets," he rasps. 

"You're one to talk," she says.

She turns and crosses to the window and stares out of it, hands linked behind her back. They don't talk for minutes. Hours. Centuries.

"When you combine justice and might, you make what is just strong, and what is strong just."

Seta does not turn. "Still talking dirty to me with Pascal?"

"I'm stating a fact. What're you going to do now?"

"Go home and sleep," she says without a moment's pause. "And then start packing."

"And not finish what you started?"

"What do you mean?"

"'What do you mean?'" he mimics. "Geez, and I almost gave you an A for your sleuthing. Looks like I'll have to bump your final grade down to a B."

Her eyes narrow. He turns his head and gives her a sidelong smile.

"Okay, time for you to piss off. I'm not giving you any more clues. If you're really that stuck, maybe I'll write you."

"I won't hold my breath," she says.

**Author's Note:**

> Sort-of spiritual ... side story to [good lies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/579999). We've had a canon Adachi-Souji social link. And then I went and wrote a Ladydachi-Girlji social link fic. A few months later, I wrote a horrible clusterfuck of an Adachi-Girlji social link and abandoned it.
> 
> ... and, it seems, for a very good reason. Upon finding it again, I took a good, long look, a few years down the track. Good lord, it wasn't pretty. So I did some intense pruning and editing and re-writing. ... no, I lie. I rewrote the entire thing because it was godawful.
> 
> Basically, I was sort of curious about how I'd write this scenario. Adachi is a sexist prick. Souji is a girl. Who was probably an actual _sukeban_ (because, look, take it from me, transferring through a lot of schools because of your parents' jobs don't do wonders for your constitution. It makes you a colossal asshole, for starters. As Sumire said, it takes one to know one). 
> 
> Naturally, this does not bode well for anyone involved.


End file.
